


crack-of-dawn dances in domesticity

by callmefairyofthesea



Series: just because it's temporary doesn't mean it's worth less [8]
Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Healthy Relationships, Romance, Roommates, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, and got an apartment together, and suddenly they're the definition of saccharine, like seriously they finally worked through their romantic relationship hang-ups, they're going to college full-time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 23:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29741835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmefairyofthesea/pseuds/callmefairyofthesea
Summary: Sometimes time clicks things into perspective. Raven realizes she’s ready.Set in the same universe as "no man is an island."
Relationships: Beast Boy/Raven, Garfield Logan/Raven
Series: just because it's temporary doesn't mean it's worth less [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2185842
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	crack-of-dawn dances in domesticity

**Author's Note:**

> I spent 107,000 words in Gar’s POV, so sue me for preferring Raven’s POV in this collection. This is the culmination of six months of Gar and Raven dancing around each other. I had a fun time thinking about what relationships might lead them back to each other, after they’ve gotten a taste of all the different types of love than can exist and what they actually want out of a romantic relationship. 
> 
> This takes place a few months after "let me down easy, before you go." Raven and Gar have just stepped down from being full-time Titans in order to finish up their college degrees. Also. Oh-my-god-they-were-roommates.

In September, he bumps her hip with his, intentionally and not because they’re standing in their tiny kitchen trying to cook. It’s an intimate gesture, a little too casual for Raven’s tastes, but that’s what it’s like being roommates with Gar. Little touches. Hands brushing when they do the dishes after dinner. Shoulder taps and fingers flicking her nose and her ears, and kittens in her lap when she’s trying to read. And, sometimes, when it’s a rainy day and they’re holed up in their fresh-painted living room, watching the storm clouds rumble, one of his hands will find its way to the back of her head and draw slow circles through her hair. The first time it happened, she pulled away before she realized she liked it. Two weeks later, she pressed her head into his hand and shot him a look that said, _please_.

So, yes, his hip bumping hers in the kitchen is not new. It’s like a little breakfast tradition, once he’s finally slurped down the coffee she made him, and the beans have made their way to his brain and his mouth, and he’s singing and dancing around the sink and flicking bubbles at her neck. And she is used to it, attuned to it, maybe even likes it because the mornings are too quiet without it, and she refuses to second-guess their back-and-forth familiarity (which took too long to get back). He grabs her wrist this time, though, green eyes sparkling in a question, and she nods to say _yes. I’ll play along_. Twirling her once under his arm, a little ballroom dancing, he trots back and forth to the jazz on the radio, and she cannot help but laugh. Not a lot. Enough for him to know she’s happy.

It feels like a game, this balance beam since they moved in together. Roommates, of course, because she is nineteen and maybe in love, but all she has for comparison is a woman who blazed like fire and whispered hot kisses down her thighs. In lust, but this is different. Different from his long-distance calls and their coffee shop not-date six months before she discovered head over heels. And as he sings into the soap bottle, sashaying, he holds her hand like he means it.

She refuses to peek over the edge until she’s sure.

Gar sparkles like sunshine, hot and bubbly with caffeine and mornings while she sips her tea on the counter. When the song changes, he joins her, their knees bumping and touching and not moving. Both their legs are bare, hers goose pimpled with late September chill, his soft with golden hair. Stomach swooping, she hiccups on her tea, and he grabs her shoulders to ask if she’s okay.

And of course she is, she coughs at him, eyes teary from swallowing wrong.

He doesn’t let go of her hand, bouncing his legs back and forth on the cabinets, and they watch the sun rise together, jazzy saxophone and trumpet lolling on the radio, the bubbles in the sink slowly popping into nothing.

 _Hey, Rae_ , he says in that way he has, like the thoughts are coming too fast, and he is failing to string them out one at a time, has tangled all the vowels together.

She says _what_ because that’s their banter, but he is nervous, fang poking out, hair mussed from bed and stubble on his cheeks. His shirt is too big, collar hanging open and off one shoulder, which she doesn’t mind in the least. His collarbone is kissable.

And that’s the day he swings them back to France and half-hearted rejections. She doesn’t follow all the words, because they start falling faster than summer rains, but she gets the gist.

He likes her, months after red stoplights in Paris, after his summer in love with black hair and ocean tides, after she disappeared into golden cliffs in space. He likes her, as in old feelings refreshed by their crack-of-dawn dances in domesticity.

He likes her, even though she was not ready in March, half a year back, almost a lifetime ago. He likes her quiet frowns when she sips on tea and sucks on her thoughts like they’re bitter. Likes that she doesn’t chase love unless she is ready, unless she is sure, unless she is prepared to risk the fallout. Likes that they are locked in a dance together in part-time heroics, full-time college and roommates. He has for a while. It doesn’t have to change anything.

But of course it does, because she thinks about his lips wet with coffee froth in the morning, and the divot of his hips when he stretches, and the way he breathes when they watch a movie late at night, slowly and then all at once. She is in love with the way he makes his tofu stir-fry, the way he glitters when he comes back from classes and tells her everything he learned, the way they work so damn well together.

But she doesn’t say that. Not yet.

She listens.

As he talks, his voice falls like rose petals, pressed flush to her skin and making her glow, because he knows she’s _white-cloak Raven_ and he knows she’s in control and he knows she hasn’t slipped in months. But he also knows this is different, new, shifting old lines and boundaries maybe faster than she wants, and _they live together_ , he says, like it’s couple talk for married. _I don’t want to push you too fast_.

She can tell he’s thought a lot about it, maybe weeks, because it rings with the sound of bathroom mirror speeches rehearsed. And when he is finished reciting, she resists the urge to start this impulsively the way she did with Komand’r, resists the smoke of demon blood and longing. Instead she says _okay_ and twines their hands into slow beginnings.

 _Slow,_ he says every morning when he hands her fresh-steeped tea and presses a kiss to her temple, as though it was never a question. And sometimes she almost forgets their eight am conversation about trying on non-platonic, because it comes so damn easy.

His fingers trace the curve of her neck when it’s a rainy day, arm draped on the couch behind her. His hip is solid against her thigh, sitting a little too close on park benches on campus. His thumb draws lazy circles on her knuckles while they talk about the shitstorm of a book she had to read for her literature class. His toes press against hers while he takes out another car on MegaMonkey Racers, the TV volume set on zero while she finishes up that psych paper. Little touches. Soft and fleeting and intimate and casual and the teasing hint of _more_ , when she’s ready. An unspoken agreement. That he’s waiting for her to make the first move, and Raven sits with her mirror and emotions and waits until she is sure.

And in between the rush of their fingers fitting together, they talk. Words falling around each other, into each other, the familiarity of half a decade memorizing each other. She likes relearning his smile, his half-mask optimism, the way he draws her into memories of their lives before the Titans, the conversations they improvise, messy and wild and free. She likes that they know each other, even though they’re not who they were at fourteen, even though they will be strangers at fifty. She likes committing to all their iterations, that they will choose to fall in love with each new person that circumstance folds them into, that they will never freeze each other in time.

She likes that when the world falls apart again, he runs on her right, runs them into the constancy of stability even in other worlds, a wormhole away from their apartment and half-rewritten relationship. She likes that on October fourth, kneeling in the night on New Azarath, knees bruised on pavement, the air hot and humid on their skin, the horizon burnt orange next to pitch-black star sprinkles, Gar has not left her side, has not asked for more than she can give. It’s so much hotter here, wherever this dimension is, and she’s so fucking tired of being dragged into other peoples’ wars.

The rest of the team is still talking to the monks in the hall, half a mile away, but she _needs_ air, needs to let loose and breathe and listen to her pounding heart until it bursts. So she is sitting in the street, watching the sky catch fire, sweating in the melty heat of some world’s summer. Gar wordlessly pulls her into his arms until her head is tucked beneath his chin. As someone who does not cry, she breathes. Their chests move together, two staticky balloons waiting for the other to pop. She’s not even sure what she’s feeling, but she is small beneath New Azarath, the architecture that stretches so high above her head she could fly forever for the roofs. It’s pretty, in a way, double suns dipped in darkness, the windows bright with magical lanterns, blue and green oceans of light. The air sparkles with fire dust, and something about being away from Earth, away from the only dimension she has ever wanted to call home, snaps the world into perspective. Like a filter she finally got right, and suddenly she can see razor-sharp edges and futures.

 _What are you thinking_ , he says, and she looks up at him, into dark green and the personification of _forever young._ Her fingers run down his cheek, so softly that his eyes flicker shut, and his chest thrums with a purr. His face is blazing hot beneath her fingertips, blood pooling in his cheeks. She needs to kiss him. But she is thoughtful first, and instincts second, so she whispers against his collarbone, _Can you bend down?_

He is confused, so confused, but their trust is forged in years of battle, unshakeable, impenetrable, and so, _so_ tender. When he leans lower, lashes quivering, she tilts the angle of his jaw, loving the way the muscles in his neck jump beneath her touch, loving _him_. Their chests are still flush, her breast pounding against his ribcage because their height difference is not perfect, but then again, neither are they.

And this is why she wanted to wait, why she needed to find the right word for the feeling that warms the space between their words and lips, why she had to make sure that Gar is not a hasty decision fueled by emotions she hasn’t always been allowed to feel. And as her hands guide him deliberately slow to her mouth, he gasps against her, hot air and peppermint and morning coffee because it’s the last thing he had today.

Her hands hook into his shoulders, holding him where she can feel him, _taste_ him, fall into the blood rushing through her ears and be steadied in his arms. He only pulls away once, just long enough to ask if she’s sure, and she exhales the _yes_ into his throat, hoping it’ll eventually reach his heart.

On October sixth, he says _I love you_ when she hands him his coffee in the morning, and she is too new to love to say it now, but he is patient—no matter how much he taps his feet and bounces his fingers and chases her into feeling like their love is a small eternity, wrapped in dates and years that never really mattered. _I love you_ , she says one day, and he knows.

**Author's Note:**

> This couple gives me soooooo many feelings. Suffice to say, I’m really proud of this collection. Gar needed something fun and easy (because Tara was NOT that), and Aqualad was a good way for him to get outside of his head and just be in love. Until it stopped being easy, and he realized he wanted something closer to home (cause he wasn’t going to leave the Titans.) Raven, on the other hand, just needed to figure out the difference between friendship and lust and romance because she’s had to keep all of her emotions holed up for forever. I gave her some of that with Gar and Tara asking her out, but she chose to explore with Blackfire because Blackfire wasn’t someone she’d have to maintain a relationship with if it all backfired. Also cause I felt like Blackfire would be a good place for her to have a sexual awakening lol lol.
> 
> But in the end, Gar and Raven choose each other. That sweet spot of friendship and trust and domestic fluff. The kind of relationship that takes a long time to build, but the kind of relationship that they both choose to commit to long-term.
> 
> Thank you to anyone who’s read all of these!!! My multi-shipper heart can now rest at peace.
> 
> (Unless…like…anyone is interested in Beast Boy/Starfire piece I’ve been playing with? I was curious to see if I could make them work as a couple. So then I…just…did it. Rated M tho.)


End file.
